The thanks of American householders are due to the author and the publishers of this book for supplying what appears to us to be the most useful and the most richly illustrated guide book to our favorite flowers. Mrs. Shelton has devoted her zeal and a great deal of her time to the task of enumerating and describing the brightest of our popular plants, and finding out what should be planted, and when and where, and what precautions should be exercised so as to avoid defects, and so as to develop the best qualities of every species. The result is a somewhat large and exquisitely beautiful book, and a great deal of pertinent information about objects which force themselves on our attention, and draw out our admiration. Taken together she finds that our favorite flowers are fit to bloom for about half of the year, or from April to October; though taken separately most of them do not continue in bloom for half so long. Next she sets herself to explain how we should sow or plant the species, by bulbs or seeds, and in what kind of soil, as well as particulars as to watering, protecting from shade, and from excessive heat or cold, and many other conditions affecting the life and behavior of the different species, and the many gardeners' accomplishments which are familiar to the specialists. She likewise enlightens us as to the improved variations of so many of our flowers which have been acquired since pre-Darwinian times, and which are largely testing the skill of the Dutch gardeners and of many others. What, when and where we are to plant come up for exposition, and her illustrations, many of them from our own neighboring states, show the success of her methods. I have compared her pictures with the illustrations of some of our gardeners' books, which give me both the names of the pictures of a great host of these most charming plants, and I have great pleasure in tendering the thanks of our readers both to the authoress and to the publishers for this most beautiful volume. -The Princeton Theological Review, Volume 14 [1916]